Questions

Friday, December 09, 2016

This site has been mostly dormant this year as we've been designing and building a new, more dimensional site that invites richer inspiration and connection. After a year of efforts, we (finally!) are ready to unveil the result.

Over the last several years, this blog has published stories from Opal School that relate to the core questions teachers around the world confront as they strive to create the learning environments children have a right to - and upon which healthy democracies depend. Readers of this blog have commented on the important role that it plays in their professional growth. Visitors to Opal School - whether arriving through our workshops in Portland or our presentations around the world - have voiced similar responses, and have asked how we might foster conversations around these questions between them and others pursuing similar investigations and facing related challenges. This new site is a platform to facilitate those conversations as we continue to document and share those learning stories.

Please check out opalschool.org and let us know what you think. We hope it will excite you and that you'll become a member, opening doors to stories from all of Opal School's classrooms, social media opportunities to connect with other members, and exclusive courses - and supporting Opal School while you do.

Monday, April 25, 2016

I start this post with a shout out to Allie Pasquier, whose recent Bakers and Astronauts post catalyzed this one. Her post examined how the ephemera of our classrooms - the surface layers - the branches - are not important in and of themselves, but only insofar as they are reflective of deeper values.

The piece crossed my laptop at an opportune moment, in the kind of way that Pagan Kennedy calls serendipity and Opal School Founder Judy Graves describes as “wondrous happenstance.” It arrived just moments after I was sitting under a tree with a group of teachers from Chicago, reflecting on two days of using Opal School’s values and Costa and Kallick’s Habits of Mind as a lens for considering classroom practices. One of the teachers jumped forward with an epiphany, realizing that all the energy she (and the students) had been pouring into their theme of towers really had little to do with buildings.

While that realization seems simple, it is profound and complex and somewhat counterintuitive. Content, it turns out, can obscure a focus on learning as easily as it can support it.

In The Importance of Being Little, Erika Christakis writes about a kindergarten classroom that explored codfish spines with Peabody Museum curators - “but fish anatomy was not her goal, critical thinking was.” One of the core theses of Christakis’s book is that we need to move from activity focused learning environments - factories generating flocks of hand-turkeys - into classrooms dedicated to producing knowledge. These need to be classrooms where questions are focused toward exploring the unknown world, rather than being limited by the known.

Christakis writes that the best sign of a strong classroom for young children is one in which young people hold conversations with many people about many different topics. Content is important because it offers a landscape through which to hold those conversations. It matters that the content is something that offers connection between the work of children and the broader world; it matters that it offers depth and complexity. I don’t think it matters, though, whether it’s towers or tricycles, triceratops or tulips.

Monday, April 04, 2016

The opinion piece is a famously third grade writing assignment. It is, in fact, Common Core English Language Arts Standard 3.1: “Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons”. It seems fair that children should learn to distinguish between fact and opinion and be able to craft an argument with cited evidence. So, in third grade at Opal we dutifully seek opportunity for the children to practice writing in this genre by constraining the curriculum in such a way that they can't help but be fired up about something they want the world to know their opinion about. Anyone who has known an eight-year-old for any length of time will know that adults are not necessary to the development of the child's opinions. They are full of them. Nor are adults necessary to the development of the child's desire to share those opinions. What adults can offer is an invitation into the use of writing as a powerful tool to deliver those opinions, to pose problems, to create solutions and to influence change.

Too often, in our effort to get the children to produce proficient writing, we forget - we ignore - we deny - we overlook the fact that there's no real writing without real reasons for writing. In our effort to get the assignment done, we reduce the complexity of the task into isolated parts. Broken down into its component parts, an opinion piece requires facts, opinions, knowing the difference, evidence, sentences, paragraphs. If the children cough up some organized collection of those items on paper, we call it good, and we move on. We cover this genre, and so many others, as ends in themselves.

Too often, we forget that we can offer the children the structure of opinion writing as a means of expression and change-making. Perhaps we imagine they will connect the dots later on in their lives -- when they really have something important to say. But this approach limits the likelihood that will ever happen by missing the opportunity children need to keep these connections whole now. As school work and life experience drift apart, they often stay that way. Further, this approach limits adults' opportunity to witness the powerful thinking and caring and desire to contribute that children are so capable of.

It is because we so often contrive assignments that produce ends with little meaning, that so often the work the children produce has little meaning. By limiting our expectations, we create the illusion that little can be expected. Reducing the disciplines of written communication down to their component parts may exercise the parts but communicate nothing. How do we create conditions that inspire children to develop these disciplines because they are necessary tools for sharing important ideas? If the disciplines were to be introduced as means that serve the meaning, what kinds of surprises might be in store?

We know that human beings, from birth, are driven to communicate as they seek connections and patterns in their environment and experience. Toddlers communicate their opinion about whether they think nap time is really preferred to playing at the park on a sunny afternoon without a single guided lesson. When toddlers tantrum, we get their meanings, and we understand their passions. And, over time, we offer them increasingly effective (and acceptable) means to communicate those passions. School can become a place where we incite that same kind of playground passion in order to create the demand for the skills of writing. But first, we have to believe that children have passions worth stirring, and that they are capable, powerful communicators who will make use of a structured genre when its value is evident.

Children are not innocent to what is happening around them. The Opal 3 children this year have regularly brought up connections about complicated things they hear on the news or the #blacklivesmatter banners they see on buildings on their way to school. They commonly voice concerns and questions and openly share their theories about what is going on and what could be different. This group of predominantly white children are trying to figure out what it means to be black and white when no one's skin is really black or white. Curiosity is fertile soil for care. Inquiry nurtures empathy. And these are questions we want the children asking. So we are listening for this particular curiosity and making an effort to sustain it. How do we help them recognize what they care about and give them a platform from which to launch their ideas in support of that caring?

After multiple experiences with a variety of texts and materials, and hearing the children vocalize their desire to make a difference, we decided it was time to explore the complex terrain between fact and opinion. Like black and white, rarely are life's distinctions so crisp, yet, in our work with young children, we often insist on simple terms. Again, by offering simplicity, we create illusions that simplicity is necessary and we perpetuate our own mythologies about the capacities of children.

We chose to extend curiosity by introducing the concept of race with this video:

We asked the children to what extent this video included information that might be fact or opinion.

Teacher: Is race a fact or opinion?

CN: There was an opinion that races should be separate, they treated it like a fact.

EC: It's something else.

DP: If you put it together, there would be a 3rd thing. We could name it.

EC: There is fact, opinion, and a third thing

Children perceive complexity all around them. I don't think they believe us when we try to explain the world in simple terms, but they are often ready to accept what we tell them, particularly when their sense of belonging is at risk by fear of being wrong or they are seduced by the feel-good of rightness. Illusions of black and white - and fact and opinion - hold tremendous power because along with them come the clear distinctions of right and wrong.

Teacher: Can you be wrong about what you see with your eyes?

DP: In The Black Book of Color he could feel the way a strawberry tasted.

Teacher: Could it be based, these race groups, on a mistake?

SE: In my perspective--why people put them into groups... I don't know how to explain it, when they do it, it takes people into their own perspective.

Teacher:Does thinking of Old Turtle and the Broken Truth help you explain it?

SE: They fight against each other.

GB: In history, people thought they were better than one another. They only had the "you are loved part" and not the "and so are they" part.

CN: You know what's a short rhyming way to say you don’t care how much melanin someone has? Melanin schmelanin! If there wasn’t such thing as melanin, there would be no such thing as races.

SE: It's an assumption.

Teacher: Drew, do you think ‘assumption’ might be that thing in between opinion and fact?

AB: You treat assumptions like facts.

GB: They might even be facts. People can say, "No, you’re not right".

Teacher: I think assumption may be that third thing. Can we test this? Think about this? I’m making a theory - I'm not really sure.

KN: I think theory might be in the middle. You have a theory and it's an opinion, someone else may have a theory and it's a fact.

GB: Sometimes you say you have a theory, but you have an assumption.

Teacher: And sometimes we think something's a fact, and we are totally wrong. Like when people believed the earth was completely flat. We know that's wrong now. But it used to be a fact.

Children are more than capable of identifying and examining all the areas of grey. The more we allow them access to that uncertain terrain, the more they show us how capable they are. The more opportunities we offer them to stretch their capacities in an effort to make change they wish to see, the more engaged they become with their own abilities and the contributions of others. They develop agency by exercising agency, not by practicing obedience.

SE: I jotted down words that might be good like actions, identity, race, all the things that are the big words we talked about..genetics and skin color. All the big words that meant a lot, because you can make a story, a poem, they are big words that put a lot out there.

EC: I'm thinking that because there are more white people in the world...

OR: I’m wondering if people who live with darker skin people think there are more dark skinned people in the world, because they are around more?

Here the children begin to ask about population statistics because it makes sense to start to wonder about the size of groups when trying to understand the balances power. They also begin to voice a desire to put their words down and "put them out there". Now they are ready for the structure of genre.

The following day, we offer them this video from the 100 People Project:

This beautiful video helped them imagine their place in our global community. AS reflected on the quote at the very end by saying, "They used that quote because if you think about how differently people live in the world you might think we all live on different planets. But we don't."

So, now armed with these statistics, they are ready to write. They have been asked to think about what these statistics make them care about and to write about that. How are things different from what they would like to see in the world? What changes do they imagine would make a difference? How will they convince others to think and care with them? We'll share some of their writing with you in the coming weeks.

It was AS who called everyone out on the ultimate illusion. As she watched these videos and participated in dialogue with her peers, she offered the last comment of the day: I have been thinking. If everyone is different, what is ‘normal’? Imagine what might happen if we all routinely asked that question in school? If the rich, robust promise of children and childhood were our focus - rather than the flat and empty promise of standardization and normalization we (sometimes) call Common Core - what might we learn to believe in? What might we want to share with the world?

In the world we live in today, how can a school stand as a transgressive force that prepares people to imagine a better world so that they can build it – even though, as Scott McLeod and Karl Fisch point out, today’s schools are stuck with “preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using tools that haven’t been invented, to solve problems we haven’t yet recognized”[i]?

At the NCTE Conference in Minneapolis last month, Ellin Oliver Keene suggested a roadmap. She said that student engagement (a pre-condition to learning that shouldn’t be confused with compliance) is based in intellectual urgency, an emotional response to ideas, perspective bending, and aesthetic involvement. Daily, I see all of these pillars in Opal School classrooms – animated through purposeful play, the role of the arts to breakdown artificial barriers between disciplines, a refusal to orient around singular answers, attention to relationships in all their varied forms…

Stepping into Opal 3 last week, I witnessed the kind of conversation that demonstrates the kind of capacities that hold the power to break down the harshly oppositional conflicts that we’re afflicted by today.

Azaleeah: You’re not the only one who can smell flowers – but you are the only one who can smell flowers your way.

Ginger: If we all saw the exact same flower in the exact same way –

KD: -everyone would have similar ideas.

Ginger: We wouldn’t have as many ideas. All our papers would be down (gesturing to notes and charts hanging on the wall around them, documenting their thinking) – because we would just have a few ideas.

These eight-year-olds know that difference generates creative responses to problems – that the ideas that animate their classroom form heterogeneous discourse. I think that this commitment to a pedagogy of listening and relationships both equips them for these unanticipated problems of the future – but also directs us to answers we need today.

[i] Thanks to Vicki Vinton for directing me to Did You Know?/Shift Happens.

Monday, November 23, 2015

When the organizers of the TEDx West Vancouver conference called to ask if someone from Opal School would like to share at their event, I shot up my hand. I knew it would be a powerful exercise in synthesis – forcing me to develop clarity around what I care most about in the work we are doing together at Opal. I knew it would be an opportunity to address audiences that might not normally come into contact with our work, and who, perhaps, would offer 20 minutes of their time to listen to some fresh ideas.

Judy Graves, Opal’s founder and a great mentor of mine, often laughed as we prepared presentations about our work. She'd quote Mark Twain, who said, “I would have written you a short letter, but I didn’t have the time.”

I had six months.

During the first several months of preparations, I had regular check-ins with the event curator, batting around ideas far and wide, and becoming painfully aware of how much I had to say and how little time I had to say it. I was surprised to learn that I would have to memorize whatever I prepared. Why did I assume that all TED presenters had teleprompters? It felt practically medieval to present without the aid of technology – especially when such marvelous technology exists. There was a part of me that could imagine getting the writing done. But when I imagined myself trying to remember the words while under bright lights with an audience and cameras running, I often saw myself jaw-dropped, mind blanked, stuck and then running for cover. So I tried to ignore that part and focus on the idea to share. What idea would I share?

I started drafts in earnest after our Summer Symposium, in June. Every version I wrote got shorter and shorter and became increasingly clear to me. I felt like I was slowly juicing a bag of fresh fruit, squeezing and sifting for the sweet stuff. I watched my favorite talks again and again and was particularly inspired by the ideas of Sarah Lewis, Brene Brown and Elizabeth Gilbert – all of whom helped me create frames to hang the work of the children on. I knew I wanted to talk about play, but I wanted to talk about play in a way that would create new images of what we mean when we say that play is a strategy for learning and not an activity we need to find time for. I knew I wanted to share the powerful ideas of the children. I knew I wanted to make connections – between play and learning, between agency and empathy, between democracy and inquiry. And I wanted not only to add to what has become a genre of lament over the state of our schools, but also to offer a vision of possibility for new practices.

When the day arrived, I still hadn't dropped the image of abandoning the presentation and running for cover. But as we sat down in the theater, the curator, Craig Cantlie, began by showing this video:

You know those moments when the universe drops a great gift out of nowhere that you are certain was meant just for you? This was one of those moments for me. In another part of my life, I was that girl on those skis. I know exactly what it feels like to stand on the top of that slope and look down and know that the worst thing you could do is to snowplow. I know the feeling of heading into a jump with ambivalence and ending up in the ski patrol toboggan. I know the exhilaration of being centered and grounded with determination and flying through the air, landing with the kind of woo-hoo this little girl has.

I remember how terrified my mom was when I jumped. And though she never rarely came to see me, she never put a stop to it. And I realized that it was likely because I had taken those jumps as a young girl many years ago now that I could find the courage to give that talk that day. It made me wonder if I offer children - my own and others' - enough opportunities to confront their own mortality and learn to trust they can survive.

And then I used that memory to walk on that stage. I wish it was a little shorter still. I wish a few other things about it, too. But there it is. And now, of course, I hope you find value in it. I hope that you find it an idea worth spreading. We think Opal School is an idea worth spreading and we're pretty sure you agree. We look forward to hearing your comments and learning what meaning it holds for you and your contexts.

Moyers asked deGrasse Tyson, What is the toughest question you would like to answer before you die? He replied:

Oh. I hate to sound cliché about this, but my favorite questions are the ones, dare I use the word, yet to be divined, because there's a discovery yet to take place that will bring that question into the center of the table. I live for those questions. So that means I can't tell you what they are, because they derive from something yet to be discovered.

BILL MOYERS: In dark matter? Influencing--

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Or for example, if we discover what dark matter is, there's going to be some question about dark matter that will rise up out of the ground and say, I never even thought to ask that question. In 1920, no one thought to ask, how fast is the universe accelerating? Okay? How fast is the universe expanding? Because no one thought the universe was expanding at all.

You can't ask questions about the movement of a universe that you don't even know is in motion. You can't ask questions about other galaxies if you don't even know there are other galaxies. So on my deathbed, I will relish in all of the questions that came up that I never thought to ask, because it was the discoveries of the future that enabled them.

In this interchange, I find so many of the themes that visitors to Opal School are struck by - around the importance of questions, children’s ideas, documentation. If we approach a class with the attitude that the reason why they're together is to develop and pursue questions that have never been asked before because they’ve never been stumbled upon - and because the ideas they generate can be a gift to each other and the world - it fundamentally shifts the nature of the classroom. Documentation allows us to pay attention to what they say and to consider how they’re ideas can lead to next steps. It offers both mirror and projector.

When we say that school is not a preparation for life but is life, this means assuming the responsibility to create a context in which words such as creativity, change, innovation, error, doubt and uncertainty, when used on a daily basis, can truly be developed and become real. This means creating a context in which the teaching-learning relationship is highly evolved; that is, where the solution to certain problems leads to the emergence of new questions and new expectations, new changes. This also means creating a context in which children, from a very young age, discover that there are problems which are not easily resolved, which perhaps cannot have an answer and, for this reason, they are the most wonderful ones because herein lies the “spirit of research.” Even though the children are very young, we should not convey to them the conviction that for every question, there is a right answer. If we did so, perhaps we would appear to be more important in their eyes and they might feel more secure, but they would pay for this security by losing the “pleasure of research,” the pleasure of searching for answers and constructing the answers with the help of others. Children are capable of loving and appreciating us even when we appear to be doubtful or we do not know how to answer, because they appreciate the fact that we are side-byside with them in their search for answers: the child-researcher and the teacher-researcher. Only in this way will children return with full rights among the builders of human culture and the culture of humanity. Only in this way will they sense that their wonder and their discoveries are truly appreciated because they are useful. Only in this way can children and childhood hope to reacquire their human dignity, and no longer be considered “objects of care” or objects of cruelty and abuse, both physical and moral. Life is research.

Opal School students and teachers are off for Spring Break. I hope we all discover and pursue new questions while away and upon return!

From February 17 to 21, Louise Cadwell and Yvonne Liu-Constant, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Lesley University, led a study tour with eleven participants to Opal School of the Portland Children’s Museum. This is the first year for Louise and the Opal School staff to collaborate with Lesley University in Cambridge, MA after two years of offering this experience for graduate credit through Butler University. This year, the participants came not only from all over the country (OR, CA, MA, VT), but also from as far away as Beijing, China.

We were mostly early childhood educators, but with diverse experiences ranging from college and graduate students, to teachers and directors, working in public as well as private settings. The group dynamics were simply amazing–we all connected in the short week that we had together, bringing deep thoughts and provocative questions from our observations of Opal classrooms to each discussion. During our last discussion on Friday, Louise described the week as “transformative,” and all heads nodded.

How does a week like this transform us?

Carlina Rinaldi, President of Reggio Children and Director of the Loris Malaguzzi International Center in Reggio Emilia, Italy tells us that…to learn is to love and to learn is to change. Carlina Rinaldi also reminds us that our emotions are engaged in deep learning and that the most powerful learning is a social experience. The kind of learning that Carlina speaks of is the kind of learning that we witnessed all week long among children and adults at Opal School. In turn, our group of Lesley students were changed by what we observed. None of us will ever be the same again.

This blog post will focus on one aspect of what we observed that changed us…The Power of Questions.

Our first day at the Opal School was a holiday, so we had the opportunity to take a close look at the environment while the children were not there. The presence of meaningful questions posted around the rooms caught our eye. The questions served as invitations for children to explore the materials and the provocations invited them to think deeply. For example, in this photo, the teachers of Opal 3 invited children to explore with wire (“What can wire do?”) while provoking a deeper inquiry about balance (“How might wire help us explore balance?” “How might wire help us express balance?”)

The questions also demonstrated how social learning is seen as critical and integrated into all learning. For example, this question found on the art materials shelf in Opal 2, where every item is in its place, asks “What does it feel like to belong?”

Questions surrounded us in written form, but also in every classroom between a teacher and one child, or in a class meeting…in math class, in literacy studio, in P.E. class. What could have been statements informing and instructing students, became engaging, collaborative and thoughtful exchanges that required thinking and creativity on everyone’s part.

Our participants frequently shared questions that they heard while observing in classrooms. These questions have inspired us to change our teaching. During group reflections, we shared:

“As a teacher, I should be posing questions, and seeing how questions can make me a better listener.”

“I’d like to create a culture of inquiry around me, and I hope that becomes more of a habit in my personal and professional life, so even when I’m talking with friends, before giving advice, I’d stop and ask: how can I make it into a question?”

“What I’m seeing here at Opal is that asking question is the pivotal act in teaching. It turns teaching from preaching into inquiry.”

“The only way we can learn from each other about asking questions is to move to a more reflective space, which allows us to be more vulnerable with each other.”

“The questions that are posed here are open questions that invite reflective thinking rather than one correct answer.”

“The way that questions are used here is very natural, seamless with the flow of conversation.”

“Teachers at Opal are well practiced and well versed in the art of questioning…they are on the same page.”

“It seems that reflective practice is a cornerstone of teaching and learning for everyone of all ages at Opal.”

One of the books that has deepened both the understanding and practice of the language used in teaching at Opal is Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives, by Peter Johnston. This book is a must read for all of us. It demonstrates how the language that we use in classrooms can support not only students’ intellectual development but also their sense of self and their social, emotional and moral development.

For those of you who would love the opportunity to visit Opal School, we highly recommend any of their professional development initiatives. Their yearly summer symposium is a wonderful way to experience the school and hear teachers’ excellent presentations about their work. Go here to register for the June Symposium.

Thank you for the gift of sharing your reflections, Louise and Yvonne! It was a real pleasure having the group here - and we look forward Louise's return at the Summer Symposium!

Tammy Clark, Laura Gloege, Ashlee Haselhorst, Amber Engelhardt, Flora Harmon, and I visited the Opal School for two days of professional development. During that time, we had the opportunity to observe in classrooms, study documentation and the process of creating and using it, and talk with teachers from the school.

We noticed how the teachers conveyed a sense of wonder and curiosity in their conversations. We noted their word choices and discussed their intentionality behind their choices. We observed the uniform nature of inquiry occurring within the entire school, that is, the inquiry-strategies and dialogue strategies used had common threads throughout all age groups and that resonated with us. We found that Opal School was a community of sincere relationships both with each other and with the world around them. Finally, we noted their commitment, their engagement, and their confidence to take risks when using new inquiry questions. All that we saw and discussed inspired us!

During the last month, I have been looking for and noticing how our visit with the teachers of the Opal School has affected our thinking and practices. I have noticed that we have re-engaged and renewed our commitment to conveying ideas with our colleagues and to conveying ideas with the teacher candidates. One example of this was a drawing workshop with teacher candidates to emphasize material placement and intentional questions and comments that focused on details.

I have noticed changes in classroom schedules to honor time and dialogue around a morning meeting. The children have responded to the invitation with extended dialogue about what the word, ’hypothesizing’ meant and how they might make some hypotheses in their small groups. It will be exciting to see where this goes in the coming weeks.

As a center, we have begun a study of the shared meaning in our values at a level that involved families, teacher candidates, and faculty. In addition, we have engaged ECE majors, who are studying methods and curriculum, to study the definitions offered in a teacher-research fashion in order to distill the shared meaning for each word and create a formation of definitions to be put into our Gathering Space. So far we have cracked open the word, communication and have begun cracking open the word, inquiry.

Thank you Opal School team for being such an outstanding group of leaders!

Thank you, Kay, for sharing your reflections: It was an honor hosting you at Opal School, and it's important that we understand what meaning groups make of their time here. Today, a study group organized by Lesley University completes a weeklong study tour. The Fishback group had six people from one center; the Lesley group is comprised of ten people from around the world. I wonder:

How does the composition of the group shift the nature of the conversations here? How does it influence the sustained effect beyond the time spent at Opal?

How does the amount of time spent at Opal School reveal different dimensions of the work - and how can we get closer to what you get from a longer time here while minimizing the effect on teachers and children?

How can we find out more from others about the meaning their making from their time at Opal School a month, season, or year after their time here?

Friday, December 20, 2013

It's the last day before winter break, and I spend a chunk of the morning dropping into classrooms. Exciting worlds are being created amongst children, teachers, and parents.

In the preschool, Story Workshop is in full force. A group of children spin stories with the observation drawings they've rendered from photos taken during their trip to the zoo.

In Opal 1, visiting parents share the story of Mandela and the way in which their voice for justice parallel his.

Two children in Opal 2 share wish-drawings they've completed for one of their classmates' brand new baby sister.

In Opal 3, children and parents celebrate the publication of their new books, stories which reveal places they love.

The Opal 4 classroom is filled with Wampanoag and Separatist peoples, celebrating their new treaty and peacetime.

Opal School is a tiny school: 37 children in the preschool program; 87 in the elementary school. Our goal at the school is create an incredible experience of learning and wonder with those children and to use that work as a way for others to, as Susan often puts it, create new memories about what is possible. Over the last week, I’ve watched that happen in different ways:

The curriculum coordinator from a neighboring district described the tension her visit to Opal inspired within her. She found herself challenged to move from restrictions based on standards and test scores to “what we know is beautiful and most important to create full human beings.”

The development director of a nonprofit organization was visibly moved as he reflected on the huge divide between the nature of the relationships he observed in the classrooms at Opal and what he has sees elsewhere.

An editor wrote about how her day at the school led to a “joyful blowing of [her] mind,” resulting in returning home feeling energized, inspired, and hopeful.

Former Opal School teacher Zalika Gardner, fresh from excellent news for KairosPDX from both the PPS School Board (which granted the charter) and the Oregon Department of Education (which awarded a major grant), talked about how she is driven to show how relevant Opal School’s work is for every single child.

Teachers at Opal School often talk about how lucky they are to work in a place where adults share a high image of the child - and where the children regularly explode that image by surprising us with their ideas. They talk about how unfortunate it is that so many of the people making decisions over children’s lives spend so little time with children. We recognize that our work takes place in a specific context - and hope that the stories and meaning unfolding in that context inspire those influencing the contexts of other children in other places to consider the implications of our work to their settings. We'd love to be a part of those conversations!

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Food for thought

"So despite everything, it is permissible to think that creativity or rather learning and the wonder of learning... can serve as the strong point of our work. It is thus our continuing hope that creativity will become a normal traveling companion in our children's growth and development."
Loris Malaguzzi

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